Brian Exposes Content Cloaking

Brian White, the latest to join Google's webmaster communication brigade has found his first issue to address. "Strange results" in the Google SERPs. The results contained pornographic terms in the description area. Ther issue that he dealt with at a forum is of web hosts found cloaking webmaster content.

Brian explains that:We've discovered that the likely explanation is that a third party gained access to a number of sites and dropped files in these accounts (including a modified .htaccess using rewrite rules) for the purpose of rewriting the home page through a proxy script. The proxy script adds links when Googlebot visits, and in a sinister twist, adds the rel=nofollow link to cap off PageRank bound for any external URL not under control of this third party. As Danny noted, they also add a NOARCHIVE meta tag to disable the cached version in results.

Matt Cutts says that: "To me, it looks like this webhost is cloaking. Then including links to porn on the cloaked page that is served to Googlebot. Neonblitz, this is just me speaking my personal opinion. My personal opinion is that if you find out your webhost is cloaking, monkeying with your content, and adding porn links to your page, you'll want to think about whether that webhost is treating you with the respect you deserve."

Today Brian elaborates upon a method to know whether this is the problem with your site. He says that, "At the risk of allowing the folks who created this to adapt, you can use Google Translate to confirm the behavior. Check any of the affected sites (no Cached link) on the Google search ["hairy sex porn free"] via Translate to see the cloaking, since the proxy script checks for a visit from Googlebot IP addresses, and doesn't discern between a regular crawl visit and a Translate request."

Navneet Kaushal

Navneet Kaushal is the founder and CEO of PageTraffic, an SEO Agency in India with offices in Chicago, Mumbai and London. A leading search strategist, Navneet helps clients maintain an edge in search engines and the online media. Navneet's expertise has established PageTraffic as one of the most awarded and successful search marketing agencies.

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